This intervention had evidently been active, for when
they talked the matter over, later in the day, with bated breath and
infinite dissimulation for the school-room quarter, the governess had
more lurid truths, and still more, to impart than to receive. She
was at any rate under the impression that she had athletically
contended, in the drawing-room, with the yellow hair--this after
removing Adela from the scene and before inducing Mrs. Godfrey to
withdraw. Miss Flynn had never known a more thrilling day, for all
the rest of it too was pervaded with agitations and conversations,
precautions and alarms. It was given out to Beatrice and Muriel that
their sister had been taken suddenly ill, and the governess
ministered to her in her room. Indeed Adela had never found herself
less at ease, for this time she had received a blow that she couldn't
return. There was nothing to do but to take it, to endure the
humiliation of her wound.
At first she declined to take it--having, as might appear, the much
more attractive resource of regarding her visitant as a mere
masquerading person, an impudent impostor. On the face of the matter
moreover it wasn't fair to believe till one heard; and to hear in
such a case was to hear Godfrey himself. Whatever she had tried to
imagine about him she hadn't arrived at anything so belittling as an
idiotic secret marriage with a dyed and painted hag. Adela repeated
this last word as if it gave her comfort; and indeed where everything
was so bad fifteen years of seniority made the case little worse.
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